Steem pyramid scheme revealed

[alexjonescrypto]

Now Coin Base is promoting this very shady operation.

[1715341935]

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[mtnsaa]

Now Coin Base is promoting this very shady operation.

Link?

[xtester]

Here's my latest analysis of Steemit: Measuring Steemit Growth: What Every Investor, Developer And User Should Know

"1. Transactions Volume: has experienced a significant growth since 4th of July and has reached a healthy state where on most days we see on average more than 100,000 transactions per day. By contrast, Bitcoin has on average more than 200,000 per day, and Ethereum less than 50,000.

2. Registered Accounts: presently Steemit has passed 60,500 registered accounts and has grown with ~17,500 new accounts or ~40,5% during the last 14 days. That’s 1250 new accounts or ~2,9% per day. As it stands now, we could reach ~75,000 – 80,000 registered accounts by the end of August.

3. Community dynamics: the community is growing and evolving at a rapid pace. Indeed, people seem to be very adaptive and strive to understand, contribute and improve things as much as possible. There are also disagreements and some apparent conflicts of interest between some well known community members(whales), but things are moving forward.  Indeed, I have not seen in crypto a community as diverse as this one. In fact, I am quite impressed at the rapidly growing number of well-connected influencers which have jumped in. As @roelandp put it, you’ve got Playmates, Vigilantes, Pirates and many others with hundreds of thousands of followers. Try to imagine what will follow.

4. Ecosystem/exchanges/developers: The ecosystem is also booming. Indeed, if you look at steemtools.com you can see that we have already 59(!) listed tools and apps. Number of exchanges has also increased. Although Poloniex and Bittrex were there, you can see that another three have listed Steem: Livecoin, HitBTC and alcurEX.

What’s even more intriguing is how involved various community developers are. And yes, the number is growing. Indeed, this seems to be at least in part due to the direct and immediate rewards they receive after implementing a solution to one of the many community needs. As things stand, this may be one of the most interesting platforms developers should engage. The reason is simple and potent: incentives. They’ve got both healthy immediate rewards, and promising future prospects if Steemit succeeds.

5. Investors, VCs, Startup Founders: another important metric to consider is what some of the bright minds of Sillicon Valley tend to think about the platform. Why? Well, because a good word from some of these people can add a lot of value and credibility to a very early stage platform and so significantly increase its exposure. Indeed, this kind of exposure is like gold, since it not only exposes Steemit to people who would merely love it if they would hear about it, but exposes it to other investors, VC’s or startup founders which could add significant value to the platform if they would join. Among these kind of people you have Fred Wilson, top Sillicon Valley investor, who is rooting for Steemit, Fred Ehrsam, Co-founder of Coinbase, mentioning it in his essay, Albert Wenger, early stage VC, mentioning it in his essay and many other startup founders who have already joined the platform."

P.S. I have also included an important note on the attrition rate mentioned by @anonymint.

[iamnotback]

An opposing perspective:

Because not everyone shares the same interests and they may not find their engaging connections here?

Not everyone in the world likes Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr or McDonalds. Not everyone has to like something for it to be successful.

I think you missed my implied point, which is that Steem appears to be a microscopic (6400 active users) community that is focused on a set of weird interests that will not be popular. And then you go compare to businesses with millions and billions of users. I went and read some of your blogs and frankly you are floating in the clouds. I find your blogs pointless, rambling, and of low quality. But apparently some users here like it when you write a very long rambling blog about tripping on Peyote, or posts some below average photos of Mexico, or talk about why you think Steem might be great (but your analysis seems very amateurish to me).

Sorry this isn't hate, rather I am just being frank. Too much backslapping and not enough reality.

Because the rewards for most users will be less than $5 per month, i.e. meaningless?

I'm not sure where you're from in the world, but $5 is a lot of money to a lot of people around the world.

I am in the Philippines. And I lived on $1 a day for a year or so in the mid-1990s in squalor here. I am not filipino.

Btw, the average salary in the Philippines for someone educated well enough to communicate eloquently in English is about $20 a day now. $5 a day is below the minimum wage now.

But any way, filipinos are not earning money here, because they do not understand how to write to the weird Western nerd audience here. I've seen a few try and fail.

And besides, when a platform is consistently allows the publication of high quality content on the Internet, that's valuable regardless of if you're getting paid to read it.

Yeah like Medium with its 25 million readers.

Medium reports only 20,000 of its 25 million readers blog weekly. Blogging is not something everyone can do well. So what do the rest of the users do that is engaging?

I think you've answered your own question here. Why is Medium so popular, if only such a small percentage like to write on it?

Because Medium caters to a diverse audience. Steem doesn't. Steem incentivizes writing to the weird Western nerd audience who awards the votes here. Medium isn't being pigeon-holed by a dysfunctional voting reward system. The voting system is not additive, it is 1 + 1 = -1.

I've never used Medium

Thx for confirming. So if you gush about Steem with its 6400 active users (bloggers and readers/commenters), why would not also consider Medium with its 25 million readers and 20,000 active weekly bloggers?

As a blogger, isn't your goal to reach the most readers. Or do you want to write for a microscopic circle-jerk just because you can earn wow $10 per day.

I agree that we (Western nerds) want to support a platform that stores content on a blockchain which no one can control, but did you know that a few guys control the Steem blockchain? Details matter. And the masses probably don't care about this aspect.

the quality of content on Steemit is incredible

Is it the quality of intellectualism and prose, or predominantly the quality that the content matches your interests?

Both. The assumption in your question seems to be that there is some kind of problem with finding a niche, or having a site that's more popular with certain types of people. There isn't. Actually, that's a good thing, because it helps something become popular faster, and more of those types of people will want to join.

It would be a problem if that "Western tinfoil hat, hippie/druggie, nerd backslapping while extracting $ from the collective TO DA MOON" niche is too small to scale the merchant ecosystem that they are relying on to create enough demand for Steem tokens so that we can afford to pay bloggers without imploding the value of the tokens.

Nevertheless, the range of content on Steemit is also quite wide. People write here talking about art, philosophy, psychology, anarchy, personal secrets, economics. If you really think it's so limited, perhaps you'd like me to link you to a few things which demonstrate the diversity.

I am not interested to read about someone peering at their navel, which is how I characterize most of the content on Steem.

I am reading a lot of it everyday, it is nearly all amateurish crap that I wouldn't read if I wasn't investigating Steem. The great bloggers stand far above, and I read them only when I need to, because they have something important to say. I don't have time to whirl away browsing amateurish blogs daily for entertainment.

[Spoetnik]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=stats

Total Members:    872924
Total Posts:    15882882
Total Topics:    594965
Total Categories:    6
Users Online:    2320
Most Online:    7150 - April 10, 2013, 11:12:15 AM
Online Today:    0
Total page views:    3065593500
Average registrations per day:    360.19
Average posts per day:    6451.8
Average topics per day:    290.85
Total Boards:    214
Latest Member:    BAMBANG SUHONO
Average online per day:    244.81
Male to Female Ratio:    3.9:1
Average page views per day:    1244153.21

Hmmm who knew Bitcointalk was not popular *anymore* ?
And here i thought everyone as telling me we have been experiencing record growth in the ALT scene.

So...

245 people come here daily but 25 million are into STEEM ?
Hmm WOW who knew ?

[iamnotback]

"1. Transactions Volume: has experienced a significant growth since 4th of July and has reached a healthy state where on most days we see on average more than 100,000 transactions per day. By contrast, Bitcoin has on average more than 200,000 per day, and Ethereum less than 50,000.

Has been flat since mid-July even while signups have increased.

As @roelandp put it, you’ve got Playmates, Vigilantes, Pirates and many others with hundreds of thousands of followers.

Who came to extract money, not to bring their followers to Steem.

Everybody is milking this. Who ever is investing to give us their money is mighty brave.

[iamnotback]

If you succeed, people will hate you

Not necessarily, if you give them a way to join you and make a lot of money.

[bbc.reporter]

If you succeed, people will hate you

Not necessarily, if you give them a way to join you and make a lot of money.

The problem is you cannot please everyone and take them with you. Just like what happens in real life some are poor and some have become rich. The ones left behind will cry and say that it is not fair because they became rich by ruthless cheating and scamming. But if those poor people were put in the same situation as the ones who became rich the funny thing is they will do the same thing. They too will ruthlessly cheat and scam to get rich. The loudest people here who always say FUD are the most envious of all because they did not think of the idea. Or maybe they did but they were scared to do it themselves or lack the confidence to do it. So they talk bad about a lot of things just like in real life.

[generalizethis]

@smooth, the line about you are a fraud if you don't call out a fraud applies to art as well.

https://steemit.com/poetry/@generalizethis/art-shouldn-t-agree-with-you

[serejandmyself]

If you succeed, people will hate you

Not necessarily, if you give them a way to join you and make a lot of money.

I was bieng sarcastic 

[AlexGR]

245 people come here daily but 25 million are into STEEM ?
Hmm WOW who knew ?

25mn is the figure for medium, not steem.

[iamnotback]

I am thinking there is a very easy way to determine if Steem or any competitor such as Peerplays is failing.

As @xtester wrote in his most recent blog, it is all about the rate of growth. Which is what I've been saying.

Seems Steem signups are averaging in the rough neighborhood of 1000 per day and are not increasing. Of these, about 80+% become inactive within 30 days or less (xtester claims 66% but I think he is fooled by a recent reacceleration of signups and my prior calculations showed 80+%).

So with actually about 200 signups per day, that is ... drumroll please ... a humongous 73,000 active users after 1 year.

And we don't know how many of those are bots. And we don't know how many of those will quit within a year.

73,000 users is freckle on an elephants ass when we are talking about the economies-of-scale in networking that are necessary to make a social network (and merchant) ecosystem viable.

Even if we increase that by an order-of-magnitude, at 730,000 users in one year, it is still at least an order-of-magnitude insufficient.

There is a deeper point. The Steem adoption rate numbers are indicative of lack of viral spread. The signups are merely barely replacing attrition. Intuitively I am nearly certain that the reason is because there is no compelling networking of the reason to signup.

Try to understand the reason people signed up for other social networks. It was because they did something very unique and in high demand. So when all your friends were joining, you caved in and joined too.

Steem has none of those attributes. It doesn't do something very unique that is in high demand. And not all of my friends are joining. The reason is because most people don't give a fuck about storage persistance and censorship resistance, and blogging to earn $ is not something most people can do well (and besides it is not immediately gratification and requires a lot of work, both of which are things the masses hate).

Sorry you need a new formula and Peerplays can repeat this same mistake but it won't cross the chasm.

I have a plan and a design and now I've chosen a 5 letter, one syllable name.

[iamnotback]

One more followup:

Now I've had a look at Medium, I have a totally negative opinion of it and won't be going back....
Self righteous PC numpties having a martyr self support meeting.

Interesting. Thanks again for the feedback.

I've read a few important technical blogs on Medium over the past year. So I don't see it as only a politically correct haven.

But what is most revealing to me about your reply, is that exactly as I expected, the Steemians are trying to force their world view onto the world. Sorry that won't scale.

I think Steemit has a potential to change the internet and thereby change the world, because of the way it is set up. Steemit has only been online since March. And if I can earn some money doing it that would be great too.

I believe that if we want to change the world, we have to engage with the world. Snobbery and a circlejerk groupthink won't get us there.

Unless you are really good at exploiting the Steememes, $10 per day for an exhausting amount of daily blogging won't change your life (nor the world's).

P.S. I wish you good luck and I actually support similars ideals as you want. But I want to be clever about attaining them.

And yeah I am trying to get off the forum, but I want to make sure my logic is not incorrect. Because I expended a couple of months of intense work to code  a dating site last Spring 2015 and it wasn't well thought out in terms of monetization and thus I wasted all that effort. So I want to make sure that before I go into the coding cave, that I'm not wasting my intense effort.

[iamnotback]

All the engagement metrics are declining:

https://steemle.com/charts.php

[AlexGR]

One more followup:

Now I've had a look at Medium, I have a totally negative opinion of it and won't be going back....
Self righteous PC numpties having a martyr self support meeting.

Interesting. Thanks again for the feedback.

I've read a few important technical blogs on Medium over the past year. So I don't see it as only a politically correct haven.

But what is most revealing to me about your reply, is that exactly as I expected, the Steemians are trying to force their world view onto the world. Sorry that won't scale.

I think Steemit has a potential to change the internet and thereby change the world, because of the way it is set up. Steemit has only been online since March. And if I can earn some money doing it that would be great too.

I believe that if we want to change the world, we have to engage with the world. Snobbery and a circlejerk groupthink won't get us there.

Unless you are really good at exploiting the Steememes, $10 per day for an exhausting amount of daily blogging won't change your life (nor the world's).

P.S. I wish you good luck and I actually support similars ideals as you want. But I want to be clever about attaining them.

And yeah I am trying to get off the forum, but I want to make sure my logic is not incorrect. Because I expended a couple of months of intense work to code  a dating site last Spring 2015 and it wasn't well thought out in terms of monetization and thus I wasted all that effort. So I want to make sure that before I go into the coding cave, that I'm not wasting my intense effort.

Start from where you failed last time: Where is the money going to come from?

[iamnotback]

Start from where you failed last time: Where is the money going to come from?

Investors. Later demand for commerce. The key is viral adoption growth.

Btw, I'm #44 on the Top 50 list at Steem this week:

https://steemit.com/steemstats/@lukestokes/exchange-transfer-report-08-07-2016-to-08-13-2016

This is relevant to our discussion:

https://steemit.com/steemit-ambassador/@hisnameisolllie/how-to-explain-steem-it-to-a-friend

The Problem

Steemit is full of well educated, cryptocurrency savvy, users. It’s incredibly easy to get ‘sucked’ in to believing that everyone should be able to understand what is going on here, or that the world suddenly understands Cryptocurrency/Blockchain technology. Well, the world doesn’t, and in order for Steemit to become successful, we (as a community) need to sign up our friends and family who are not interested in these intricacies.

For the first 4-6 weeks of using Steemit, whenever I tried to sign up a group of friends I got blank faces, sometimes even fear…

Say, "from the constant stream of new investors because it is onboarding the masses".

As far as my rebuttal to it being a "ponzi scheme"

Say the initial money comes from constant stream of investors and later the money comes from commerce once the masses have joined.

Lol:

got a nice twist on where the money comes that I use to explain to friends of mine. I say that money comes from drug lords that wash their money here and in order to do so, they give some to you. It works like a charm. When they ask for proof I say that @berniesanders and @nextgencrypto are ones them and show that they donate to almost every marijuana post.
It's not the real explanation, but effective way of explaining.

[generalizethis]

Start from where you failed last time: Where is the money going to come from?

Investors. Later demand for commerce. The key is viral adoption growth.

Btw, I'm #44 on the Top 50 list at Steem this week:

https://steemit.com/steemstats/@lukestokes/exchange-transfer-report-08-07-2016-to-08-13-2016

This is relevant to our discussion:

https://steemit.com/steemit-ambassador/@hisnameisolllie/how-to-explain-steem-it-to-a-friend

Say, "from the constant stream of new investors because it is onboarding the masses".

As far as my rebuttal to it being a "ponzi scheme"

Say the initial money comes from constant stream of investors and later the money comes from commerce once the masses have joined.

My guess it is in more in the 2 year time frame for social media success--and not in the rocket ascent of an instagram outlier. Or did I read you charts wrong, Shelby

[iamnotback]

My guess it is in more in the 2 year time frame for social media success--and not in the rocket ascent of an instagram outlier.

I believe it is unlikely for Steem to make any changes that would create viral adoption. I thus believe it will peak at much less than 1 million users.

Yes I think you need a rocket viral ascent.


The Chinese appear to be coming to game Steem's curation reward system:

This has never happened before, and Maximum CPC exceeds 800%

Later they will realize they need to collude to take more of the money, as did the Bitcoin Chinese mining cartel.

But Bitcoin has a use case. I fear Steem will unravel. I don't think it can sustain at a low level of usership because the forces holding it up are expectations and later these must turn into fighting over money (Tragedy of the Commons).

All that changes perhaps if Steem has a widespread use case. But I don't see it.

[generalizethis]

My guess it is in more in the 2 year time frame for social media success--and not in the rocket ascent of an instagram outlier.

I believe it is unlikely for Steem to make any changes that would create viral adoption. I thus believe it will peak at much less than 1 million users.

Yes I think you need a rocket viral ascent.


The Chinese appear to be coming to game Steem's curation reward system:

This has never happened before, and Maximum CPC exceeds 800%

Later they will realize they need to collude to take more of the money, as did the Bitcoin Chinese mining cartel.

But Bitcoin has a use case. I fear Steem will unravel. I don't think it can sustain at a low level of usership because the forces holding it up are expectations and later these must turn into fighting over money (Tragedy of the Commons).

All that changes perhaps if Steem has a widespread use case. But I don't see it.

Rocket ascent is the outlier in the graphs you used, so I'm not sure why you assume steemit would be the exception--Instagram's straight out the gate burst was probably due to low user expectations as far as language and interface is concerned (a monkey could probably be taught to use it), whereas steem is more complicated, so lag should correspond to complexity. Unless someone finds a way to dumb it down tremendously, they probably maintain their lead. All the algo and initial distribution arguments seem like theater of distraction at this point. If serious people can maintain their interest and grow their bases organically, then there's a chance that it works (at least as far as blogging goes).

[iamnotback]

Rocket ascent is the outlier in the graphs you used

Are you referring to Google search popularity that I mentioned in my blogs week ago?

Facebook reached 1 million users in 11 months (which is roughly 10X Steem's current growth rate) and the Internet population was 1/5 then (so Steem is growing 1/50th as fast as Facebook did, unless it can accelerate):

On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.

1 million — End of 2004.
5.5 million — End of 2005.
12 million — End of 2006.
20 million — April 2007.
50 million — October 2007.
100 million — August 2008.
150 million — January 2009.
175 million — February 2009.
200 million — April 2009.
250 million — July 2009.
300 million — September 2009.
350 million — End of 2009.
400 million — February 2010.
500 million — July 2010.
608 million — End of 2010.
750 million — July 2011.
800 million — September 2011.
845 million — End of 2011.
901 million — March 2012.
955 million — June 2012.
1.01 billion — September 2012.
1.06 billion — December 2012.
1.11 billion — March 2013.

If yes, note steemit has already peaked and is declining:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&q=steemit